8+ Sample Hospital Incident Report
What Is a Hospital Incident Report?
A hospital incident report is a document that gives the chain of events that has happened in a healthcare setting. It may be about any accidents that could have happened in a healthcare facility like falling patients and others. Unforeseen circumstances like this need immediate action so that the victims can have the attention that they need. Through the incident report, other incidents can also be avoided by taking action to correct any neglect or mistake in the healthcare facility.
A hospital incident report is also called a medical incident report or a patient incident report. Sometimes, it can also be referred to as an accident report. Whether you are going to make a hospital fall incident report or a hospital serious incident report, you may need to fill up a hospital incident report form. This is the right process to report an incident in a hospital. First, you should report the incident to the nursing department and fill out a form that will detail the situation of the patient. Follow the hospital incident reporting system. By following the right procedure, you can be more certain of the welfare of the patient.
Tips on Hospital Incident Report
At the time of the incident, whether you are an employee or a security guard, you should write a hospital incident report. The nurse in charge should be informed and all the necessary actions should be taken. Any unusual event in the healthcare facility should be reported. Together with the witnesses of the event, create an incident report that can take care of everything. Well, to be better at this, you may need the following tips that we have provided for you:
Maintain the Practice Everyday: A certain discipline in writing the incident report is needed. There is a need for everyday practice to do this thing. Train your staff to create a hospital incident report every time an incident happens. If you train them, they will have the habit of doing the report. If you will not maintain the practice, they might not be proactive in making the report. An incident may pass without making a report. When this happens, incidents in your hospital may be neglected. This will not be good for your patients and the reputation of the hospital. With proper training, everyone will be active to make an incident report when an incident unexpectedly takes place. Even with how surprising the incident may be, your staff may find the time to have the incident report.Pick an Analysis Method: A good process may be required in creating the incident report. For the hospital to have a good report, you need to have an analysis method on how to report the incident. Make the staff wise in making decisions regarding the incident. You can also use analysis tools for every type of incident. The methods that you can adapt are the PRISMA method or the SIRE method. PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) method is a process that is based on evidence. It can help your staff to best describe what has happened and what has been found. It is a SaaS service that can make you report systematic reviews. On the other hand, the SIRE method is a comprehensive program where you can have inspections based on a standardized set of questions. Whatever method you choose to ease the work of your staff in creating an incident report, just be sure that this method can be convenient to use for your staff.Make a Good Form: For the incident report to be effective, you must create a good hospital incident report form. The accuracy of the report may depend on the form that your staff can fill out. All the needed questions should be in the form to report everything important about the incident. But remember that you should limit the questions that you are going to include in the form. Reporting an incident may be time-consuming. With the use of the form, you can save time. If there are enough questions in the form, there is no need for your staff to relay a story about the incident. Telling the whole story may require a lot of time and if everyone is busy in the hospital, it may not be good. It can happen that no one will find some time to report the incident. So, a form will be truly helpful to ensure that the incident will be reported.Consider the Root Causes: It may be good to report the causes of the incident. All of you must understand the value of the root causes of the incident. When the hospital will know the causes of the incident, it will also know how it can prevent future incidents. The causes are very important so that you will know what to do next time. You will know the things that you should put or avoid and how you can give precautions for other patients. Without a risk assessment, you will not discover all the risks that you should be careful of. Know the risks for every incident. This is the only way you can avoid any incidents to happen to your patients in the future.Think of a Good Process: No one will want to take action in any matter if you know that the process is not good. For the reporting to be successful, you should provide good procedures and an easy process. If this will be so, you can ascertain that your staff will be encouraged to do the reporting. Make sure that you can give a good process for your employees. Provide a form that will be easy to fill out and provide a step-by-step process that your staff can follow in doing the report. When they are guided, you can be sure that they will find the initiative to do the incident report.Make a Central Reporting: Give the option to your employees to report centrally and not by department. In this, you will have one central staff that will operate to handle the incident reports. This is much easier for your employees to do. They will have one place where they can report all the medical incident reports. When reports will be done to each department, there will be a chance that they will not be handled well. This is because of fear of reprisal and they are not trained in this thing. But if you have one centralized place for the hospital incident report, you can be sure that every critical incident will be handled well. There will be better hospital security for any patient incident.Protect the Reporter: For anyone to have the initiative to report an incident, you must let them know that they are protected. There should be a distinction in your incident reporting system that will protect the employees who are going to report the incident. Make an agreement that can make the employees know that nothing can be taken against them. Nothing should be traced back to the reporter. Also, you should ensure in the agreement that nothing will be provided to third parties. When everyone in your hospital knows that reporting incidents is safe, they will be encouraged to take action when an incident happens.Share the Report: Do not let the incident report be just a secret. Share the report with your organization. Reading the report will not take so much time and affect the work schedule of your staff. If you do so, you will make them aware of the things that they should be careful of to avoid the same incidents to happen in the future. Whenever there is an incident report, be apt to share it with all your employees. You can even make a letter to announce the report. This is to warn every employee of the incident that has taken place. In medical practice, there is a lot that you should be careful of. So, your manager should know how to maintain good health in your facility with no accidents. Together with the reporting system, ensure that everyone will have a part to avoid future incidents in your facility.Use Notifications: For an easier process, use notifications to let your employees know of the incidents that have happened in your hospital. With this, it will be easy for them to know every incident. Just be sure that you will be apt in sending notifications. After the report has taken place, do not wait for a day to pass before your employees will know about the incident. Send notifications that will warn them of the event and add some precautions on how to avoid the same incidents in the future. By doing this, you will know that everyone can participate well to avoid incidents in your hospital.Give Feedback to the Reporter: Feedback will be good. If reporters get some feedback from their work, they can be encouraged to report again in the future. Fill out a feedback form that will talk about the result of what they have done. You can tell the measure that has been given to take care of the incident. Make the reporter know of the current situation of the victim. And most of all, thank the reporter for doing such good work. By doing this, reporters will know that they are doing the right thing.
How to Create a Hospital Incident Report
Maybe you want to help report every incident in your healthcare facility. What can be stopping you is you do not know the process that you have to go through. To have ease in making a report, you may want to follow the steps that we have provided.
1. Take Immediate Action
There is no time to delay actions when an incident happens. Know that every minute counts so you have to report the incident immediately. Contact the nursing department and be ready to relay the incident.
2. Fill Out the Hospital Incident Report Form
Be quick in getting the hospital incident report form. If you do not know how to fill it out, you can refer to any hospital incident report template or hospital incident report example. Examples of incident reports in healthcare can give you an idea of what you are going to include in the form.
3. Find Witnesses
Accident reports may need some witnesses to ensure the accuracy of the report. Find the witnesses of the event and get some information about what has happened. Write the information in your report.
4. Suggest a Corrective Action
A corrective action plan is needed. Suggest some things that should be done to prevent future accidents or incidents. This is necessary so that everyone will be careful next time.
FAQs
What are the benefits of a hospital incident report?
The benefits of a hospital incident report are committing to follow a protocol, developing a habit to ensure safety in the hospital, identifying the root causes of incidents, and having good policies.
What are the types of patient incidents?
The types of incident reports in healthcare are harmful incidents, near misses, and no-harm incidents.
Making a hospital incident report is for the good of the hospital. It needs to ensure that all patients should be safe. It should know how to protect every patient. The report will help so that incidents in the hospital will be decreased. Through it, patients will have the security of safety. Do not hesitate to make a hospital incident report when an incident happens.
